Edinburgh-based independent specialist in telecoms and information technology consultants, FarrPoint, has today announced that they have completed a major milestone in their work on the West Oxfordshire Superfast Broadband project.
The company supported the District Council throughout all stages of the procurement to select the right supplier to bring Next Generation Access broadband (NGA) to more than four thousand rural homes and business in the area. The contract was awarded to Gigaclear, a rural broadband specialist, who will extend its ultrafast Fibre-to-the-Premise (FTTP) network to the area.
FarrPoint worked with West Oxfordshire District Council in fulfilling the requirements of the NGA broadband procurement in accordance with State Aid rules and Broadband Delivery UK’s programme assurance processes (BDUK), a unit within the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. This initiative provides a compliant mechanism for local authorities to invest funds in extending the availability of NGA broadband to currently unserved areas.
Andrew Muir, CEO of FarrPoint, said: “We helped West Oxfordshire conduct a thorough open market review and State Aid public consultation and supported the Council through every step of this complex infrastructure procurement exercise. The project will bring state of the art broadband to over four thousand homes and businesses through public subsidy. In turn this will help to unlock substantial private supplier investment of over £5m into the area.
Muir continued: “The availability of NGA broadband is essential for many reasons. It ensures that the infrastructure is in place for smart city and town initiatives, enables the installation of IoT technology and has a myriad of applications in the public sector – from technology enabled healthcare to emergency services networks. It also stimulates the local economy by allowing small companies and private users the broadband speeds required to be able to compete in today’s digital marketplace.”
The initial work on the roll out of FTTP will start in November 2017 and is expected to be completed by the end of 2019. The project will provide superfast broadband capabilities to over 99% of premises in the district.
Will Barton, Business Development Officer at West Oxfordshire District Council, said: “we are delighted with the work that FarrPoint has done to bring our project to the point where Gigaclear is able to start putting infrastructure into the ground. Ultrafast broadband is essential for individuals and business in the area so we are pleased that, with the contract in place, we can see this investment through to completion.”
FarrPoint is an independent consultancy based in Edinburgh advising organisations throughout the UK on telecoms, IT and technology.
